Forget traveling, expensive cars and a wild life, Swedes have a very clear idea of what's most important.

The Swedish dream
Forget traveling, expensive cars and a wild life. One in five Swedes would rather pay his debts if he suddenly had a lot of money. This according to the latest poll made by Drömbarometern from Svenska Spel.
The debts in Swedish households pile up and economists and politicians alike worry over this. Swedes are simply not good at paying their mortgages; only half of all residents with mortgages pay off their loans. Nevertheless, a life free of debt is high on the wish list for Swedes. Forty percent say they’d pay off their loan before anything else if they won a lot of money or became financially independent.

“What surprised us the most this year, is the clear relation between the dream of money and the wish to pay debts,” says Birgitta Bosell-Biström, at Svenska Spel in a press release. “Nearly every fifth Swede dreams about money they’d use to pay off debts.”
But money isn’t everything. Topping the average Swede’s wish list is having a healthy and long life, and after that they want financial independence. Traveling, having a family and getting a better apartment or house are also things Swedes dream about.
Eight out of ten would do something to make their dreams a reality: The fastest way to acquire the means to do this, the majority believes, is to get money through gambling. Second on the list is through luck. Six percent of all Swedes think they’d get money through a miracle. Nearly 63 percent believe their dreams will eventually come true, reflecting that Swedes are optimistic, which may in turn actually increase the length of their lives. According to brain researcher Katarina Gospic, it has been scientifically proven that positive thinking can prolong life.

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What Swedes dream about differs according to where in Sweden you live—people in Stockholm dream of finding love and romance and moving abroad, whereas people in Värmland dream of changing the world, and those in Skåne dream of having a successful career. To live life the way we want to would make us happier and more satisfied, but it would also mean we’d have no worries over our finances. Over 100,000 people answered Drömbarometern’s poll.

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